Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

I didn’t catch the vice presidential debate. What happened? The transcript suggests that mostly the VP candidates talked about the presidential candidates rather than about what each might do personally. Is this conventional?

The transcript shows a long discussion about police, which seemed odd because running police departments is mostly done by states and cities, no? Most interesting to me was Pence’s comment: “Police officers are the best of us.” Can that be true? Pence implies that it is because they risk being killed: “African-American, Asian, Latino, Hispanic, they put their lives on the line every single day.” But the risk of death for a police officer is negligible compared to the risk incurred by a front-line combat soldier. Why wouldn’t it be “Combat infantry second lieutenants are the best of us” if the standard is risking one’s life for fellow citizens?

Kaine presents himself as the defender of women: “Donald Trump [should apologize] for calling women slobs, pigs, dogs, disgusting.” A scholar told me that in the old days we presented our enemies as subhuman, e.g., portraying the Japanese during World War II as monkeys. Now we point to their treatment of women and say that we are going to rush in with our military to defend those women. Kaine seems to be doing the same thing domestically.

Pandering to voters by telling them that they are going to get great stuff from the government but won’t have to pay for it with taxes seems to still be in style. The moderator: “According to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, neither of your economic plans will reduce the growing $19 trillion gross national debt. In fact, your plans would add even more to it.” Pence seems to think that Americans are going to get off their sofas, put down the Xbox controllers, and return to the labor force: “when you get the economy growing, Elaine, that’s when you can deal with the national debt. When we get back to 3.5 percent to 4 percent growth with Donald Trump’s plan will do, then we’re going to have the resources to meet our nation’s needs at home and abroad, and we’re going to have the ability to bring down the national debt.” But he doesn’t say that he will scale back the programs listed in Book Review: The Redistribution Recession that make it irrational for Americans to work (or encourage states to adjust child support guidelines so that it becomes less profitable to have sex with a dermatologist than to go to college and work).

Kaine promises a Soviet-style planned economy for achieving economic growth: “First thing we do is we invest in manufacturing, infrastructure, and research in the clean energy jobs of tomorrow. Second thing is we invest in our workforce, from pre-K education to great teachers to debt-free college and tuition-free college for families that make less than $125,000 a year.” The “we” here seems to be the government’s central planners. “Third, we promote fairness by raising the minimum wage, so you can’t work full-time and be under the poverty level, and by paying women equal pay for equal work.” The central planners will decide how much each American should get paid, just as was done in the Soviet system. As the Democrats are solidly in the lead I would say that this demonstrates the continuing desire of Americans to enjoy a planned economy (see “Citizens for a Planned Economy”).

It seemed as though mostly the candidates talked about stuff that is too complex and technical for the average voter to know or care about. Was there an obvious winner?

[Meanwhile my Facebook feed continues to be filled with hatred of Donald Trump and celebration of Hillary’s wisdom. Hillary supporters have come to the conclusion that all Trump supporters are either stupid or sexist/racist or both. This makes some statistical sense because less than half of the voting population supports Trump and roughly half of Americans are less intelligent than average. I wonder if anyone has followed up by administering an IQ test to voters to determine if in fact IQ can be used to predict voting behavior.]

 

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A friend took the same photos with his Samsung Note 7 (with latest battery!) and my iPhone 6 Plus. It was close to high noon on an overcast day. Most of the iPhone images were unusable due to motion blur (both cameras were in fully automatic mode; the iPhone selected ISO 32 and a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second while the Samsung picked ISO 64 and a shutter speed of 1/120th to 1/150th). Here are the results:

• from the iPhone 6 Plus
• from the Samsung Note 7

And just today DxOMark declared that the Google Pixel delivers better performance than any other smartphone camera. I do like the idea of a normal perspective lens on a phone (iPhone 7 Plus), but I wonder if Apple spent too much time on Social Justice Wars (and avoiding corporate income taxes) and not enough on squeezing in a bigger sensor.

Related

• Samsung Galaxy S7 review
• Falling out of love with the Samsung Galaxy S7

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“China To Build 66 New Airports Over The Next Five Years” describes the Chinese commitment to expanding commercial aviation infrastructure. “China Embraces General Aviation” talks about an additional 300 airports being built for business jets and piston-powered airplanes (this complements Chinese purchases of manufacturers of personal aircraft and components for those aircraft, e.g., Cirrus and Continental). Meanwhile, Californians are working to shut down the Santa Monica airport despite Federal government orders to keep it open (based on the fact that Federal tax dollars were used to pave the current runways and taxiways). The Airnav page for KSMO says that the to-be-closed airport handles 452 operations per day or 165,000 per year.

Related:

• High-speed Rail in California versus China
• U.S. versus German infrastructure spending and results

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Those of you who are approaching 100 may recall that I started photo.net back in 1993. It started out as a place for people to learn from tutorials (example: Making Photographs) and engage in a text-based discussion of technique- and gear-related issues (there was no Trump v. Hillary campaign at the time to consume 100 percent of Internet users’ attention). In the late 1990s we added a photo sharing system that let people show off their best work and/or get feedback on attempted great work. I spun off the site in late 1999 to some grad school friends who had a plan to surf the dotcom wave with photo.net as a base, but instead they were pounded into the sand when the market collapsed.

Continuing the occasional theme of this blog of “What is the point of the Internet if we have Facebook?” I am wondering if there is still a place for online communities for photographers and, if so, what the main purpose would be. Gearheads seem to post a lot of comments on the articles at dpreview.com. Is this sustainable, though? If you care about photo quality a little you would presumably buy either the latest iPhone or the latest Samsung, If you care a little more you buy a Sony mirrorless such as the A6300 and leave it on green idiot mode or maybe kick it into “sports” mode as the occasion requires. How many people are there for whom anything further is required these days?

How about showing off one’s best work? If the audience is on Facebook, why display photos anywhere else? Admittedly most people have only 500 or so Facebook friends, but isn’t it possible to mark a posting as available to the public and then a great photo can get more widely shared on Facebook?

Discovering the best work of other photographers? That seems like something that is hard to do on Facebook.

What do folks think? The things that people accomplished with photo.net in the 1990s… what’s the most popular way of accomplishing those things now? And is there a long-term place for niche online communities such as photo.net and, in particular, niche online communities for photography enthusiasts? (If the answer to the latter is “yes”, to what extent is it required to tie in with Facebook, e.g., for user authentication and maybe to users’ public content from Facebook?)

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Icon, whose amphibious seaplane has been the biggest news in the light aircraft world for about six years (during all of which the plane was 1-2 years away from first deliveries), is setting up a factory in Mexico (Avweb).

The FAA approval process for a factory is painful. However, given the labor-intensive production processes used to build airplanes (many unchanged since the 1930s), I continue to be surprised that more work isn’t done in Mexico. Stripping and repainting an airplane is particularly labor-intensive and painful yet most planes operated in the U.S. are repainted in the U.S. (cost range for a private plane: $20,000 to $200,000, depending on size).

One good thing: Airplanes can fly over Donald Trump’s proposed wall! (or the 580 miles of existing border “fence”)

Related:

• Cessna setting up airplane component production in Mexico (2010)
• Icon A5 limps into production surrounded by a phalanx of lawyers
• Icon A5 update from NBAA 2015
• Icon A5 Seaplane follow-up (2012)
• Icon A5 review with shopping video (2010)

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Photo nerds: Who is sick of having electronic flash units destroyed by leaking alkaline batteries? But who is also sick of paying big $$ for lithium AA batteries? You can buy 8 batteries on Amazon for $13.75. That’s $1.72 per battery, about half the price compared to 15 years ago? A 24-pack of same-brand alkaline batteries, however, is just $9.59, or 40 cents per battery.

I think that rechargeable lithium batteries have gotten cheaper much faster. If we can have a Tesla (3) in every driveway why haven’t leak-prone not-very-power-dense alkaline batteries disappeared in favor of sub-$1 lithium disposables?

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American politicians love to talk about deporting illegal aliens (e.g., Bill Clinton in 1995). Yet one of the things that foreigners like to do once in the U.S. is have children. The kids are entitled to U.S. citizenship and, once they turn 21, are entitled to bring their parents back to the U.S. as permanent residents (process explained).

Is the current election debate about immigrants therefore mostly irrelevant? A lot of the stories in the media seem to concern families in which the U.S. citizen children are pretty close to 21 and the parents are undocumented immigrants potentially subject to deportation.

[What about consuming welfare benefits? At least here in Massachusetts, once the parents have green cards they are entitled to free housing through various towns’ public housing programs. They are entitled to free healthcare through Obamacare. Once in the public housing system they can get an Obamaphone (eligibility requirements). So to the extent people are unhappy about paying higher taxes to provide welfare to undocumented immigrants they should be just as unhappy about paying the same higher tax rates to provide welfare to documented immigrants, no?]

Related:

• “US twice tried to deport man killed by police in California” — Maybe not too many people will actually be deported because their native countries will refuse to accept their return. (People who don’t want to be deported could simply ask officials in their original homeland not to cooperate and/or pay a non-cooperation fee.)

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Readers: Who has been to Cuba on one of the newly approved flights? If so, what is it like?

[I’d be more interested in going if the Central Planners in D.C. had decided to favor Boston, but apparently the Great Father in Washington thought that consumers should fly from other cities (see “Boston loses out on commercial flights to Havana”).]

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Most articles on immigration talk about the number of people arriving in the U.S. “Thousands Eager to Vote Won’t Become Citizens in Time” (nytimes) instead looks at the number who are becoming citizens:

In the last year almost 940,000 legal immigrants applied to become citizens, a 23 percent surge over the previous year.

If we want to see what kind of politician will be successful in the U.S. ten years from now should we look at what kinds of politicians are successful today in the countries from which immigrants are arriving? Or are there specific things that American politicians can promise immigrants in order to gain their votes?

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One thing that Americans like to do is express outrage that leading Russian politicians and/or their friends are getting rich. How new is this? “Not very” is the answer from Peter the Great: His Life and World:

Bribery and embezzlement were traditional in Russian public life, and public service was routinely looked upon as a means of gaining private profit. This practice was so accepted that Russian officials were paid little or no salary; it was taken for granted that they would make their living by accepting bribes. In Peter’s time, only a handful of men in government were said to be honest and imbued with the idea of conscientious service to the state—Sheremetev, Repnin, Rumyantsov, Makarov, Osterman and Yaguzhinsky. The others were loyal to Peter personally, but regarded the state as a cow to be milked. As a result, the majority of administrators were motivated less by a sense of service to the state than by desire for private gain, mingled with the effort to escape detection and punishment. Thus, two powerful negative motives, greed and fear, became the predominant features of Peter’s bureaucrats.

Disappointment followed disappointment, not only at the highest levels. Once, Peter elevated an honest lawyer to a judgeship. In this new position, where his decision could become an object of bribery, the new judge became corrupt. When Peter found out, he not only absolved the judge, but doubled his salary to prevent further temptation. At the same time, however, the Tsar promised that if the judge ever again betrayed his trust, he would surely hang. The judge fervently promised that Peter’s faith was justified—and soon afterward accepted another bribe. Peter hanged him.

Peter, a man of simple tastes, was distressed and disgusted by the shameless rapacity of his lieutenants clutching at every opportunity to rob the state. On all sides, he saw bribery, embezzlement and extortion, and the Treasury’s money “flowing from everybody’s sleeves.” Once, after hearing a Senate report listing further corruption, he summoned Yaguzhinsky in a rage and ordered the immediate execution of any official who robbed the state of even enough to pay for a piece of rope. Yaguzhinsky, writing down Peter’s command, lifted his pen and asked, “Has Your Majesty reflected on the consequences of this decree?” “Go ahead and write,” said Peter furiously. “Does Your Majesty wish to live alone in the empire without any subjects?” persevered Yaguzhinsky. “For we all steal. Some take a little, some take a great deal, but all of us take something.” Peter laughed, shook his head sadly and went no further.

Related:

• Were American politics better 50 years ago? (quote from Sam Rayburn: “I have been unable to save much money in my life. I have been in politics, and in politics an honest man does not get rich.”)
• “How Hillary and Bill Clinton Parlayed Decades of Public Service into Vast Wealth” (Fortune)
• “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal” (nytimes)

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